Want to influence an increasingly volatile Iran? Forget the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Forget the UN Security Council. Think soccer instead, or more particularly FIFA, the international federation of national soccer associations.
Last week, the IAEA reported Iran to the Security Council for concealing parts of its nuclear program for years, in contravention of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which that country is a signatory. Russia, China, and the European Union still hope for a diplomatic solution, but it is more likely the Security Council will soon begin issuing warning resolutions and eventually call for the imposition of diplomatic and economic sanctions.
This is where FIFA comes in. To understand how, step back to 1992.
On May 30, 1992, the Security Council passed Resolution 757, which imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions on Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro) for its role in the civil war in Bosnia. The resolution also called upon UN member states to "take the necessary steps to prevent the participation in sporting events on their territory of persons or groups representing Yugoslavia."
Euro 1992 - the final phase of European soccer championships for national teams organized every four years by UEFA (the union of European national football associations), and for which Yugoslavia had qualified - was due to begin in Sweden on June 10. UEFA is a non-governmental international organization and hence, technically at least, not obliged to heed Security Council resolutions. However, probably because of a request by Sweden and the European Union, it chose to do so and banned Yugoslavia from the competition.
If the Security Council decides to impose sanctions on Iran, FIFA will most likely act as UEFA did with Yugoslavia and ban Iran from participating in the World Cup, which is due to kick off in Germany on June 9.
FIFA, however, could do even better. It should announce now that it will impose such a ban on the same day the Security Council will vote on sanctions.
Collective sanctions are usually imposed when international treaties and practices are violated. They can be easily justified but one should not, however, overestimate their effectiveness in bringing about the desired political changes. Academic research indicates that sanctions have an important symbolic value, but that they play, at best, a contributory rather than a decisive role in producing political change.
An announcement by FIFA that it is ready to ban Iran from participating in the World Cup would have a much greater symbolic value than UN economic sanctions themselves because few people pay attention to UN affairs, but half of humanity is gearing up to follow the World Cup.
Nobody, moreover, could argue that this type of sanction will be responsible for the death of an unspecified number of Iranian children. Being deprived of the opportunity of cheering for one's team will only diminish the enjoyment of life of Iranian soccer fans between now and the end of June.
Iranians are as big soccer fans as Latin Americans, Africans or Europeans, and rightly very proud of their team having qualified for the final phase of the World Cup. A FIFA ban might lead some to rally around the regime, but most would correctly identify the ruling mullahs - who are already widely despised - as the cause of their deprivation.
If a decisive international response threatening Iran with isolation in the world, coupled with determined domestic pressures, has a chance of pushing the theocratic regime in Teheran to reconsider its defiant and smug attitude, then FIFA's threat of a ban could play an important contributory role.
It might well be that the Iranian regime would choose to continue its game of brinkmanship with the West, calculating that a combination of its ability to foment unrest and finance terrorism in the Middle East, higher oil prices, and an apparently overstretched U.S., would ensure that it prevails.
In this case, however, the ruling mullahs should have no doubt that democracies might be slow to move, but when they decide to act they do so in a decisive way. A military intervention against Iran is definitely a possibility and such an intervention, if it will come to that, would enjoy as large a support as the first Gulf war. Nobody, in fact, feels comfortable with the prospect of a nuclear-armed radical Islamic regime that denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
FIFA is in the position of making a significant contribution to try and convince the Iranian regime that it is in its best interest to solve the conflict peacefully. In 1992, Denmark, which had finished second behind Yugoslavia in the qualification round, had 10 days to recall its players from vacation and prepare for the tournament that it went on to win by beating Germany 2-0 in the final.
Bahrain, the first non-qualified team from the Asian grouping, which would replace Iran if the latter is banned, should be told now to begin warming up in the event that its team will be called upon to face Mexico in the opening match of Group D in Nuremberg on June 11.
Osvaldo Croci is an associate professor of international politics at Memorial University. He is a fan of Leeds United.
